A Million Little Fibers (South Park)

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"A Million Little Fibers"
Stick to making cameos, Towelie.
Series: South Park Part of Season: 10 Episode Number: 144 Air Date: April 19, 2006 Writer: Trey Parker Director: Trey Parker Previous episode: "Cartoon Wars Part II" Next episode: "ManBearPig"

"A Million Little Fibers" is the fifth episode of the tenth season of South Park. It was written and directed by Trey Parker, and first aired on April 19, 2006. The episode is based on the controversy of James Frey, author of the memoir A Million Little Pieces.

Plot

After getting fired at P.F. Chang's for being high on the job, Towelie decides to write a memoir, titled A Million Little Fibers. He pretends to be a person and not a towel in order to get his book published and succeeds. Towelie lands on The Oprah Winfrey Show, which helps his memoir get promoted and leads people to quit their addictions. Meanwhile, Oprah's vagina named Minge, and anus named Gary are upset that she doesn't give them attention because she's always working, so they come up with a plan to show that Towelie lied about being a person, which would hypothetically get Oprah fired.

Why It Doesn’t Get Any Fibers

1. Having an episode focus solely on Towelie isn't a very good idea. He's a very minor character who was conceived on a joking reference to the over-marketing of characters in the wake of the series' success. Because of this, throughout the episode they constantly make the same towel jokes that has been used before in previous episodes.
2. No recurring characters are featured in this episode. Stan, Kyle, Cartman, and Kenny are not even shown in one of the background scenes.
3. The episode has Oprah's vagina and anus as the antagonists in this episode, which is bizarre even for this show's standards.
   • Speaking of them, having a vagina and an anus move the plot forward goes beyond logic. For example, we see Minge and Gary (yes, her body parts are sentient beings with given names) talk to journalist Geraldo Rivera over the phone. How did they dial the phone if they have no hands, and how did they get his phone number? The biggest questions are, how are Minge and Gary able to talk, and why isn't Oprah aware of it?
4. While a wacky plot can often work well on South Park, it does not in this case because it quickly devolves into becoming extremely nonsensical and incoherent rather than crazy, unpredictable, and cleverly satirical; a stark contrast to what makes Matt and Trey's "wackiness" work in other episodes. The plot is basically the equivalent of throwing ideas to a wall and randomly picking what lands as opposed to cleverly thinking about what makes the crazy ideas work in tandem with a good plot.
5. Multiple bad action scenes:
   • The scene where Minge and Gary die from gunshots is incredibly disturbing depending on your point of view.
   • Also, how was the SWAT sniper able to aim and shoot at Gary if Oprah was facing towards him? Minge was in clear sight from the sniper's point of view and was holding a gun which made the place to aim even easier, so why not shoot what was the obvious target?
6. The people who bought Towelie's book and Oprah are very stupid for not realizing that Towelie is not a person but a towel from the very beginning. He even uses the alias Steven McTowelie which should have been a dead giveaway! He also wears a hat and fake mustache which doesn't at all make him look human.
7. Everyone acts unreasonable after finding out that Towelie is a towel. They want to lynch him even though his book helped people. One person even says, "That towel made me quit drinking alcohol."
8. The animation is incredibly limited even by the show's usual standards. A lot of the episode is just made up of still shots of the lower half of Oprah's body, while her vagina and anus have long conversations.

Redeeming Qualities

1. The opening scene with Towelie working at P.F. Chang's while high is absolutely hilarious.
2. Towelie becomes redeemed after saving the hostages from Minge and Gary and is forgiven for his lie.
3. The episode gives a good lesson of rewarding yourself after working hard.
4. The eponymous memoir is an interesting parody of the controversy surrounding James Frey's book A Million Little Pieces being found to be partially fabricated, and Towelie's appearance on The Oprah Winfrey Show comments on Frey's own quite well.

Reception

"A Million Little Fibers" received mixed-to-negative reception, and became notorious for how horrible people consider it to be. Creators Trey Parker and Matt Stone consider this episode to be one of their worst, regretting not having the boys being in the episode involving Oprah's vagina and anus. They also felt that it would've been better to make both plot points as two separate episodes. It was also ranked as #2 on Jem Reviews' "Top 5 WORST South Park Episodes" list, who called the episode "too weird" and "legitimate nonsense", having trouble even trying to comprehend the plot of the episode.

On IMDb, this episode has a 6.3/10, making it the lowest rated episode of the series.

Trivia

• The episode was originally going to parody the television show Intervention. The idea would be done later in the Season 14 episode "Crippled Summer".

External Links

• http://www.gameshowgarbage.com/tc044_SPFibers.html

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